Author Topic: SpaceX Spacesuit Revealed  (Read 161208 times)

Offline woods170

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Re: SpaceX Spacesuit Revealed
« Reply #240 on: 04/05/2018 07:29 am »
Wow...Not making the gas/comms interfaces compatible smacks me of the same mistake as the round/square C02 scrubber canisters that almost doomed the Apollo 13 rescue.

Starliner and Crew Dragon are not working in conjunction. They are stand-alone systems. The redundancy is in having two providers for crew transport.

Having both a Starliner AND a Crew Dragon at the ISS, at the same time, will be the exception rather than the norm.

A crew stranded at ISS because Starliner is grounded/malfunctioning will be picked up by a freshly sent-up Crew Dragon. Additional SpaceX IVA suits will go up on that ship to "suit" the additional crew members coming back down. The Starliner suits will remain on orbit, with the Starliner.
And vice versa.

No need for compatible interfaces. The strength of having two providers, to be each other's back-ups, is in having dissimilar systems.

Offline tyrred

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Re: SpaceX Spacesuit Revealed
« Reply #241 on: 04/05/2018 07:57 am »
Starliner and Crew Dragon are not working yet. When they both are, perhaps this compatibility question will actually matter.

Offline clongton

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Re: SpaceX Spacesuit Revealed
« Reply #242 on: 04/05/2018 12:46 pm »
Wow...Not making the gas/comms interfaces compatible smacks me of the same mistake as the round/square C02 scrubber canisters that almost doomed the Apollo 13 rescue.

Starliner and Crew Dragon are not working in conjunction. They are stand-alone systems. The redundancy is in having two providers for crew transport.

Having both a Starliner AND a Crew Dragon at the ISS, at the same time, will be the exception rather than the norm.

A crew stranded at ISS because Starliner is grounded/malfunctioning will be picked up by a freshly sent-up Crew Dragon. Additional SpaceX IVA suits will go up on that ship to "suit" the additional crew members coming back down. The Starliner suits will remain on orbit, with the Starliner.
And vice versa.

No need for compatible interfaces. The strength of having two providers, to be each other's back-ups, is in having dissimilar systems.

Woods, there is another potential situation; unlikely, but still potential.
Remember the old scifi movie "Marooned"? Such a situation is possible.
Suppose that the crew is no longer aboard the ISS but after separating, the re-entry burn failed. That crew is now stuck in orbit.

Both the Dragon and Starliner spacecraft should be able to dock with each other because they've both been designed to dock at the station with the same adapter. But how long could either crew survive on orbit until a rescue could launch? I don't know the answer to that.

How quickly could Boeing get another Starliner up there? I would think that the Atlas launch vehicle would be the long pole in that situation, meaning that Boeing would be incapable of launching another Starliner in time. That leaves SpaceX, which has a stated goal of having several nearly flight-ready Falcon-9's and Dragons in the barn at all times. How long would it take them to launch a rescue mission? Again I don't know the answer to that either.

But it does seem to me that because the 2 spacecraft could dock with each other that  an exchange of flight suits would not be necessary at all. The stranded crew would simply enter the docked rescue spacecraft, don the provided flight suits and come home. Or, just ride home in a shirt-sleeve environment if flight suits were not available for the rescue.

All this depends of course on the length of time either spacecraft can support its crew after leaving the ISS v.s. how long it would take to launch a Dragon rescue spacecraft. I say Dragon because I don't believe Boeing would be capable of responding in time. They may have a Starliner available but the Atlas launch vehicles are long lead items - they won't have one available.

So the bigger question is not the compatibility of the flight suits, but whether or not NASA will have a LON policy for Commercial Crew in place. That question should probably have a dedicated thread as it is OT for this thread.
« Last Edit: 04/05/2018 12:51 pm by clongton »
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Offline envy887

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Re: SpaceX Spacesuit Revealed
« Reply #243 on: 04/05/2018 12:54 pm »
It's faster and easier to go back to ISS than to launch a rescue mission directly to a capsule.

Offline Zed_Noir

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Re: SpaceX Spacesuit Revealed
« Reply #244 on: 04/05/2018 01:15 pm »
It's faster and easier to go back to ISS than to launch a rescue mission directly to a capsule.

Only if the RCS is still functioning. And we are getting OT.  :-X

Offline rsdavis9

Re: SpaceX Spacesuit Revealed
« Reply #245 on: 04/05/2018 01:20 pm »
Or the ISS could come to them if they didn't get to far from the orbit.

EDIT: also isn't there a male/female problem of docking to crew capsules together? The crew capsules will have male docking connectors?
« Last Edit: 04/05/2018 01:26 pm by rsdavis9 »
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Offline su27k

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Re: SpaceX Spacesuit Revealed
« Reply #246 on: 04/05/2018 01:24 pm »
I thought the crew rotation plan is to have two CC vehicles at ISS at the same time? i.e. launch replacement crew before the current crew departs, this would allow the vehicle for the replacement crew to rescue the returning vehicle.

Offline envy887

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Re: SpaceX Spacesuit Revealed
« Reply #247 on: 04/05/2018 01:24 pm »
It's faster and easier to go back to ISS than to launch a rescue mission directly to a capsule.

Only if the RCS is still functioning. And we are getting OT.  :-X

If they can't dock at ISS they can't dock to a rescue capsule either. They would need to do an EVA for rescue.

Offline Cherokee43v6

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Re: SpaceX Spacesuit Revealed
« Reply #248 on: 04/05/2018 01:32 pm »
Wow...Not making the gas/comms interfaces compatible smacks me of the same mistake as the round/square C02 scrubber canisters that almost doomed the Apollo 13 rescue.

Starliner and Crew Dragon are not working in conjunction. They are stand-alone systems. The redundancy is in having two providers for crew transport.

Having both a Starliner AND a Crew Dragon at the ISS, at the same time, will be the exception rather than the norm.

A crew stranded at ISS because Starliner is grounded/malfunctioning will be picked up by a freshly sent-up Crew Dragon. Additional SpaceX IVA suits will go up on that ship to "suit" the additional crew members coming back down. The Starliner suits will remain on orbit, with the Starliner.
And vice versa.

No need for compatible interfaces. The strength of having two providers, to be each other's back-ups, is in having dissimilar systems.

Honestly, it sounds like it would be a cheaper simpler fix to have 'connector adapters' available on the station for that sort of situation.
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Offline woods170

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Re: SpaceX Spacesuit Revealed
« Reply #249 on: 04/05/2018 01:40 pm »
Woods, there is another potential situation; unlikely, but still potential.
Remember the old scifi movie "Marooned"? Such a situation is possible.
Suppose that the crew is no longer aboard the ISS but after separating, the re-entry burn failed. That crew is now stuck in orbit.

Both the Dragon and Starliner spacecraft should be able to dock with each other because they've both been designed to dock at the station with the same adapter. But how long could either crew survive on orbit until a rescue could launch? I don't know the answer to that.

How quickly could Boeing get another Starliner up there?

I would think that the Atlas launch vehicle would be the long pole in that situation, meaning that Boeing would be incapable of launching another Starliner in time. That leaves SpaceX, which has a stated goal of having several nearly flight-ready Falcon-9's and Dragons in the barn at all times. How long would it take them to launch a rescue mission? Again I don't know the answer to that either.

But it does seem to me that because the 2 spacecraft could dock with each other that  an exchange of flight suits would not be necessary at all. The stranded crew would simply enter the docked rescue spacecraft, don the provided flight suits and come home. Or, just ride home in a shirt-sleeve environment if flight suits were not available for the rescue.

All this depends of course on the length of time either spacecraft can support its crew after leaving the ISS v.s. how long it would take to launch a Dragon rescue spacecraft. I say Dragon because I don't believe Boeing would be capable of responding in time. They may have a Starliner available but the Atlas launch vehicles are long lead items - they won't have one available.

So the bigger question is not the compatibility of the flight suits, but whether or not NASA will have a LON policy for Commercial Crew in place. That question should probably have a dedicated thread as it is OT for this thread.

There is no LON policy for CCP. Shuttle had a LON policy, courtesy of STS-107 exposing a critical design flaw. But that was related to the heat-shield. A vehicle getting stuck in orbit because the reentry burn fails is a scenario deemed so unlikely that it does not need being remedied via a LON policy.

But I digress.
« Last Edit: 04/05/2018 01:41 pm by woods170 »

Offline guckyfan

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Re: SpaceX Spacesuit Revealed
« Reply #250 on: 04/05/2018 02:26 pm »
EDIT: also isn't there a male/female problem of docking to crew capsules together? The crew capsules will have male docking connectors?

The docking adapters are designed to be androgynous. They can dock to the ISS and to each other.

Offline whitelancer64

Re: SpaceX Spacesuit Revealed
« Reply #251 on: 04/05/2018 02:48 pm »
To be specific, all IDSS-compliant docking systems are androgynous by design. Any two can be either active / passive and are meant to be able to dock with any other IDSS-compliant system.

I don't think there have been any tests of the Dragon v2 docking with the Starliner, but in theory it's 100% possible.

WRT on-orbit survival time, the limiting factor will be the capability of the life support systems to remove CO2 from the air.

They may be launched up with some food / water, but those are supposed to be transferred to the ISS, so neither would have any food or water for the crew, or would be limited to a very small amount. Also, neither Boeing nor Starliner have toilet facilities, so that would be an issue.
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Offline Chris Bergin

Re: SpaceX Spacesuit Revealed
« Reply #252 on: 04/05/2018 03:21 pm »
Back on topic (per report to mods alerts) please.
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Offline jpo234

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Re: SpaceX Spacesuit Revealed
« Reply #253 on: 04/05/2018 03:21 pm »
There is no LON policy for CCP. Shuttle had a LON policy, courtesy of STS-107 exposing a critical design flaw.

Just in case others were wondering, too: LON = Launch On Need
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Offline obi-wan

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Re: SpaceX Spacesuit Revealed
« Reply #254 on: 05/07/2018 05:33 pm »
There's a science/science fiction convention (Escape Velocity 2018) at National Harbor in DC this weekend. A friend of mine who's working the con says that an organizer told him SpaceX was sending one of their spacesuits to be on display. I regard this as maybe a 10% likelihood of being real, but my friend is checking it out on Friday and I'll go on Saturday if it turns out to be true.

Offline S.Paulissen

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Re: SpaceX Spacesuit Revealed
« Reply #255 on: 05/07/2018 05:55 pm »
Please PM me or post here if it's said to be true as I'm in the area and would also like to go see it.
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Offline Machdiamond

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Re: SpaceX Spacesuit Revealed
« Reply #256 on: 05/19/2018 05:58 pm »

Offline Johnnyhinbos

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Re: SpaceX Spacesuit Revealed
« Reply #257 on: 05/19/2018 07:00 pm »
I want to say the visor articulates up into the top of the helmet, but the geometry just doesn’t seem correct for that...
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Offline Machdiamond

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Re: SpaceX Spacesuit Revealed
« Reply #258 on: 05/19/2018 08:05 pm »
Yes, the visor is fixed (it was removed here for training). The boundary where the helmet opens up (or separates) is more clearly visible in other photos, particularly the rear view of Starman while in space.

Offline kdhilliard

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Re: SpaceX Spacesuit Revealed
« Reply #259 on: 08/03/2018 11:07 pm »
Here's a screen shot from 01:36 of the intro to today's Commercial Crew announcement.  (Watch 01:32 - 01:37.)  Have we seen a partially opened visor on a SpaceX helmet before?

Also, from the subsequent Reddit AMA:
Quote
rhoracio: big congratulations to you all!  Q: would you please explain does SpaceX'es helmet visor open?
nasa: The visor does open. We normally have it open on our way to the pad, but closed for launch and for entry. -Bob
nasa: Yes. There's two push buttons about where your chin is. They allow it to pop open whenever you need it to. - Doug

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